CURRENTS: CARPETING; Look Up, Look Down, Art's All Around

By Aric Chen

Published: October 19, 2006

Since Sept. 12, visitors craning their necks beneath Lever House, at Park Avenue and 53rd Street, above, have found the ceiling over its ground level covered in a colorful graphic mural by the artist and filmmaker Sarah Morris. Now Ms. Morris's work -- which makes abstract connections between architecture and social, economic and political relationships -- can be experienced underfoot on a new wall-to-wall carpet that was unveiled at last week's Frieze Art Fair in London.

Like her Lever House installation, which was organized by the Public Art Fund and is up through Dec. 3, the carpet, called Herbalife, is a composition of crisscrossed lines and patchwork colors that ''create a virtual space,'' said Ms. Morris, 39, who is based in New York and London. ''I liked the idea of doing something wall-to-wall that could configure into an existing architecture,'' she added.

The design's title comes from the nutritional supplement company Herbalife -- specifically, the building that bears its logo in Los Angeles, near which Ms. Morris stayed while shooting her 2004 film, ''Los Angeles.'' (By coincidence, a scene in the film captured Suzan Hughes, a former wife of Herbalife's founder.) Some of the carpet's shapes were inspired by the area's architecture.

Offered by the Art Production Fund, a New York-based nonprofit, the carpet is made of nylon and can be bound as an area rug. It costs $12 per square foot, with a minimum 12-foot width. The Art Production Fund is at (212) 966-0193 or worksonwhatever.com.

Photos (Photos by Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times; top left, Robert Caplin for The New York Times)